MELBOURNE, Australia — For seven hours Friday afternoon, the Australian Open turned into the trout farm of American tennis.
It was nearly impossible to watch a singles match without seeing the red, white, and blue flags on the scoreboard. Two players in their early 20s and a teenager who looks younger than his 19 years have made it through the men's draw to enter the second week. .
Two Orange County boys, Lerner Tien and Alex Mikkelsen, who made it to the final 16?
they didn't.
“I lost one set and got one break in the first qualifying round,” Tien, a teenager in the same group, said after defeating France's Corentin Moutet in three sets. “It feels a little crazy to be in week two now,” he added.
Michelsen had gotten there earlier by defeating 19th seed Karen Khachanov in three sets.
The American women's victory came amidst all of this, as Emma Navarro topped the second week with three wins in three sets to start the day. Madison Keys ended the night defeating friend, compatriot and Australian crowd favorite Daniel Collins.
It wasn't all that surprising. Keys and Navarro have been there before, as has Coco Gauff. Tommy Paul's best Grand Slam result came in 2022 when he reached the semi-finals in Australia, with a comfortable win over Roberto Carballes Baena the day before, tying him with Gauff, Keys and Navarro. Paul and Gauff then further accelerated the American momentum with wins over Aleksandar Davidovich Fokina and Belinda Bencic in the fourth round.
Tien, 19, and Mikkelsen, 20, who will try to stay lively in Melbourne on Monday, are on the other end of the spectrum. Michelsen also has past results. He reached the third round in Melbourne last year and has won a couple of first-round matches at the past two US Opens, but nothing like this time, defeating two top-20 players in three matches. Match.
Tien, a two-time U.S. junior champion, has played in two Grand Slam main draw matches so far this week, losing in four sets to Arthur Filth at the 2024 U.S. Open and losing in three sets to Tiafoe the year before. I was suffering. Third time was the charm. Defeated Camilo Hugo Carabelli (Argentina) in 5 sets.
And while the draw gave us two matches against the ATP Tour's biggest adversaries, it was less of a baptism of fire and more of an introduction to the dark arts of tennis with twisting shots, mesmerizing spins, and the big boys. It was a daunting journey. Tien battled fifth-seeded Daniil Medvedev for five sets and nearly five hours, ending the match before dawn. Moutet then appeared and, at two sets down, reminded Tien that he had to win the third set as well. Moutet played as if he was limping due to a hip injury in some parts, but ran across the court at full speed in others. It's an interesting time to be a Grand Slam newbie.
“I really didn't know what was happening to him,” Tien said at a news conference, with one foot stuck in the washing machine.
Add in Ben Shelton's four-set victory over 2-2 Italian Lorenzo Musetti and you have a remarkable statistic. This will be the first Grand Slam since 1993 to feature three American players under the age of 23 in the second week. Tien and Mikkelsen are also the first pair of American men under the age of 20 to reach the third round of a Grand Slam since Andy Roddick and Mikkelsen's coach, Robbie Ginepri, did so at the 2003 US Open.
Two recent American major finalists, Taylor Fritz and Jessica Pegula, felt the fourth round was too far away. Gael Monfils played four perfect sets to knock out Fritz. Olga Danilovich produced two identical ones to defeat Pegula.
Yes, it's a little weird. But maybe it's explainable.
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In mid-November, Mikkelsen and Tien clashed. The two close friends, who play Fortnite together in their spare time and have been training at the same Orange County Tennis Academy for the past four years, had just completed a long season. They had the usual problem of hitting the ball too long and hurting their joints.
They didn't launch the console.
“They basically put down their rackets for two weeks and went to work,” Rodney Marshall, a Southern California tennis fitness guru who has worked with Mikkelsen over the last year, said in an interview from Los Angeles on Saturday.
Everyone calls Marshall “Rocket.” He is one of the sports torture experts that American tennis players have trusted for 15 years to make them faster, stronger and more durable.
Marshall, Mikkelsen and Tien practiced together twice a day, six days a week, at the academy in California where they have been training together for the past four years, and on the sands of Aliso Beach, California.
They only had a small window, so they needed to figure out what kind of incremental gains they could get. They wanted to strengthen their lower body strength and fine-tune their movements to get in and out of corners of the court faster. This is an essential skill these days.
Thien, who missed the first three months of the season with cracked ribs, needs to use his left foot (the back foot of his forehand) a little more to maximize the power he unleashes from his 5-foot-11-inch height. There was. frame. At 6-foot-5, Mikkelsen needed to improve the way he lowered his center of gravity and delivered power from a squat position.
Life has become a never-ending series of isometrics and plyometrics. Isometrics (holding stretching positions for long periods of time) strengthen muscles and tendons. Plyometrics (jumping) increases explosive power.
On Saturday they went to the beach to run short distances. Marshall brought American footballs and sent them on pass routes in the sand, one as wide receiver and the other as cornerback.
“It was like cramming,” he said of Tien and Michelsen. “They really embraced the suffering.” If that line sounds familiar, there's a good reason why. Carlos Alcaraz, 21, a four-time Grand Slam champion, believes he won the French Open last June because he found “joy in suffering.”
Before long, Tien was feeling a little more energetic when hitting tennis balls down the line. Michelsen contorted himself on the ground, telling Marshall he could stay there all day. “I love it here,” he would exclaim.
“It's a constant battle every day,” Michelsen said in an interview after his third-round victory over Khachanov. This was the second victory over Seed in six days.
“I look at Marin Cilic. He's like 6-6 and always very low. I've been trying to recreate that.”
Alex Mikkelsen's explosiveness from the ground has been key to his rise in Melbourne. (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
On the other side of the country, in Florida, Paul was going through his own fitness block with Fritz before Fritz headed to Southern California for tennis training. Francis Tiafoe, Riley Opelka, Jacob Fearnley and several other pros were in Florida with Paul.
“It's a good group,” said Paul, who often talks to Michelsen about the NFL and NBA in the locker room. “He's a very good competitor,” he said of Mikkelsen.
Paul said in an interview Friday that he is determined to compete on his own terms in 2025. He wants to move others this season instead of being moved too much himself. Last year, when he ran into Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, it seemed like it was always going to happen. His fast-paced front-foot tennis may hurt them for a while. He beat Alcaraz in sets at Wimbledon and defeated Sinner 4-1 at the US Open. But then they would shove him behind the baseline and eject him from the contest.
“Carlos moves incredibly well when he needs to, but when you watch Carlos when he's playing his best tennis, you know he's giving directions,” Paul said.
Shelton was in Orlando doing his thing. He was trying to figure out how to go from being a below-average returner to a player who could earn free points on his own serve while preventing other players from gaining free points on their own.
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From the pre-dawn hours Friday, when Tien defeated Medvedev in a match that ended at 2:56 a.m., to the sundown Saturday, when Shelton defeated Musetti in a fourth-set tiebreaker, the under-23 trio reaped the rewards of their training. showed. It was all worth it.
Tien returned to his hotel just after 4am. He ate a cold, stale pizza but didn't fall asleep until just before 7am. He slept until about 1:30pm before arriving in Melbourne. I returned to the park, where I basically hit a tennis ball, stood still for 45 minutes, and endured 5 hours of massage and physical therapy.
He was completely asleep by 11pm. “It was so necessary,” he said.
He then carved up Moutet and did to the Frenchman what Moutet had done to many others over the years, minus the dark arts of delay and distraction.
“His effort today was unbelievable,” Tien's coach Eric Diaz wrote in a text message. “I wasn't feeling well physically. My mental recovery was also impressive.”
Lerner Tien's coat craft tied his opponents together. (Daniel Crockett/AFP via Getty Images)
Shelton also needed to rebound. He watched over and over again the two losses to No. 16 seed Musetti and remembered how the Italian hit a series of backhand passing shots down the line. Tied 5-5 in the fourth set tiebreaker, Shelton hit a terrifying drop shot that withstood Musetti's horrible running back hand. Although the point appeared to be lost, Shelton knew what to expect. He covered the line, drove a volley into the open court, and served out the match.
He spent the afternoon focusing on other games, especially Michelsen.
“Me and Alex are boys,” Shelton said at a press conference.
“I texted him and told him every game he won he was a dog, because it's true. He's a dog. He's going to be close to the top of his game soon.”
With Shelton watching, Mikkelsen scored a massive three points in the second set tiebreaker, effectively clinching victory over Khachanov. They all had roots in offseason training blocks. He took first with a curved 168 mph second serve that leveraged his leg strength and jumping ability. He sprinted towards the ball outside the tramline and smashed a forehand down the line for his second goal. He won his third with a powerful backhand down the line that popped off a little from a medicine ball throw with Marshall and Tien.
As for Tien, Shelton sees a kindred spirit in his fellow left-handers despite their opposing styles. Tien's game is all about changing the pace and floating the ball deep into the backcourt before suddenly attacking. His tennis isn't quite Shelton's all-out attack, but Tien breaks through here out of nowhere two years after Shelton did it on the same court.
“Not a bad place to make a breakthrough,” Shelton said. “We're going to have a lot more players in addition to the players who are already at the top in the United States. It's really starting to show.”
That's certainly true. It's much easier to set up a trout farm in a wealthy country with over 300 million people, but we do what we have to do. Thirty-three Americans participated in the singles draw, more than any other country. Two players have already earned safe harbor and four more could potentially qualify as the tournament moves into the quarterfinals.
Now comes the difficult part. Cut the tape at the finish line, just like Gauff did in New York 16 months ago. It doesn't require a trout farm. It requires unicorns, but there are no farms that can produce unicorns.
(Top photo: Peter Staples/ATP Tour)
